Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) insisted earlier this month that he could still run for the U.S Senate, with the filing deadline less than a month away.
“I have it circle–believe me,” Cummings said in an interview with Baltimore’s WYPR, referring to the Feb. 3 deadline to file nomination papers in the Democratic primary. Laughing, he added, “My wife remind me every day.”
Even a very late moving Cummings candidacy would shake up a race that at the moment features two candidates from the D.C suburbs.
Polls have consistently shown that Cummings would lead in a race against Reps. Donna Edwards and Chris Van Hollen, both of whom have been campaigning for months to succeed retiring Sen. Barbar A. Mikulski (D). A Baltimore Sun poll conducted after Van Hollen began a major ad blitz in Baltimore found that 40% of Democratic primary voters still would choose Cummings.
Cummings, who lives in troubled West Baltimore, has repeatedly said he wants to do what is best for his city after a year marked by riots, a rising homicide rate and a mistrial for one of the police officers implicated in the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray.
“Here in the House, I have a large staff because of the role I play as a ranking member” of the House Oversight Committee, Cummings said in the radio interview.
“I want to do whatever will allow me to be most effective in representing my constituents.”
If elected, both Cummings and Edwards would make history as the first Black senator from Maryland. Despite the ability to make history, Edwards has been struggling to find the money to compete and has failed to gain major endorsements, even from African Americans.
The challenge, according to those who know Edwards, is that during her years in Congress, she has positioned herself as an outsider, bucking the establishment and spending relatively little time building a donor base.
“Donna has always kind of been her own woman — she wasn’t someone who would pal around at party events with our donors,” said Matt Verghese, a former state party staff member who wrote an analysis of the third-quarter fundraising reports for the blog Maryland Juice 2.0.
Van Hollen, who is white, has spent his years in office building solid relationships with political leaders across racial lines.
Maryland’s Democratic electorate is about 40% African American, and black women have turned out at higher rates than any other demographic group in the past two presidential elections.
If Cummings does decide to enter the race, his delay may have caused him endorsements with some Baltimore politicians and donors who were waiting for Cummings already moving on. The Democratic members of the Baltimore County Council endorsed Van Hollen recently and Baltimore NAACP President Tessa Hill Aston is supporting his as well.
